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Travis_Lloyd's profile

Mentor

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106 Messages

Friday, April 25th, 2014 9:15 AM

Severe Problems With Outlook Email Authentication And Both Legacy DSL & U-verse

I'm an IT consultant who has worked with Outlook since the earliest versions and with AT&T since it was Southwestern Bell, and I have never seen a problem as bad as this.  This problem has been plaguing me and several of my clients for 2 or 3 weeks now and it's about to run us all nuts (some, like me, have "legacy" DSL and some have U-verse).  The maddening thing is that it happens intermittently, not constantly and with no rhyme or reason.  For reasons unknown, the AT&T mail server suddenly stops "authenticating" the Outlook client, either for the logon, password, or both and that accursed window pops-up asking for your logon & password.  However, no matter how many times you put them in (verifying that they are correct first) and check the "Save Settings" box, the authentication fails over & over again, and then just suddenly starts working out of the blue.  I have checked and double-checked all the settings and they are correct per the AT&T online documentation.  I've even run the online-based configuration tool and the same thing continues to happen on a totally random basis. One of my clients spent a couple of hours on talking to (overseas) tech support and they only made the problem worse, causing him to get a totally new email address and change his password multiple times. He also told my guy that AT&T has "mandated" that your password be changed every 3 months, but to the best of my knowledge that's only if you use the Webmail product, not the SMTP based method with Outlook.  This is happening with Office 2007, Office 2010 & Office 2013 products, right across the board.  I keep telling my clients that if I could solve the problem I'd do it for me first but that is not assuaging their frustration.  This has to be on the AT&T end of things due to the nature of the problem but they do not seem to want to acknowledge it.  Any insight as to 1. why this is happening on such a protracted basis and 2. what AT&T is doing to address it would be appreciated.  When it happens to this many people over an extended period of time there's definitely something "rotten in San Antonio"...  Thanks

Scholar

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112 Messages

9 years ago

Problem is with the servers. This isn't a user problem that can be corrected. Come on AT&T...get someone to fix it!

Tutor

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10 Messages

9 years ago

I tried turning off my Avast anti virus mail shield.....that didnt resolve the error.   Still fails intermittantly.....and unfortunately that will prevent Outlook from making another attempt later.....till i click on the error and clear it.....  Hate to have to get a new mail progream.....

Scholar

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93 Messages

9 years ago

I think I'll start leaving a post every time I get the notification!

 

Scholar

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93 Messages

9 years ago

Error Network Password

Scholar

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112 Messages

9 years ago

Problem still exists. When is AT&T going to fix this?

Scholar

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93 Messages

9 years ago

Error Network Password (again)

Scholar

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93 Messages

9 years ago

Error Network Passord... again & again.......

Scholar

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93 Messages

9 years ago

Again... "Enter Network Password"

Scholar

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112 Messages

9 years ago

When will this be corrected? Would be nice if AT&T did something about it.

Scholar

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93 Messages

9 years ago

Guess what I found this morning?

 

"Enter Network Password"

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